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تحفة النظار في غرايب الامصار وعجايب الاسفار 12.40

English (machine translation) 12.40

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English

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Shaykh Shihāb al-Dīn, son of Shaykh al-Jām of Khurāsān, to whose grandfather the city of al-Jām in Khurāsān is attributed as we have related, was one of the great, pious and virtuous shaykhs. He used to fast continuously for fourteen days. The sultans Quṭb al-Dīn and Tughluq honoured him, visited him and sought his blessing. When Sultan Muḥammad came to the throne he wished to employ the shaykh in some service of his, for his custom was to employ the jurists and the pious, arguing that the first generation, may God be pleased with them, employed only people of learning and piety. Shaykh Shihāb al-Dīn refused the service, and the Sultan addressed him about it face to face in his public audience,

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and he showed refusal and resistance! The Sultan was angered by this and ordered the venerable shaykh and jurist Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn al-Simnānī to pluck out his beard! Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn refused, saying, 'I will not do this.' So the Sultan ordered the beard of each of them to be plucked out! And it was plucked out! Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn was exiled to the land of Tilang; then after a time he appointed him qāḍī of Warangal, and he died there.

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Shihāb al-Dīn was exiled to Dawlat Ābād, where he stayed seven years. Then he sent for him, honoured and esteemed him, and put him in charge of the Dīwān al-Mustakhraj, the department of the arrears of officials, which it extracts from them by beating and torment. Then he increased his honour and ordered the amīrs to come and greet him and to obey his words, and there was no one in the Sultan's palace above him. When the Sultan moved to reside on the river Gang and built there the palace known as Sarg Duwār, meaning 'like Paradise', and ordered the people to build there, Shaykh Shihāb al-Dīn asked him for permission to stay in the capital. He permitted him [to go] to a stretch of waste land six miles from Dihlī, where he dug a large cave, in the interior of which he made rooms, storerooms, an oven and a bath, and he brought water from the river Jūn. He cultivated that land and amassed much wealth from its produce, because those were years of drought. He stayed there two and a half years, the period of the Sultan's absence.

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His slaves worked that land by day and entered the cave by night, closing it upon themselves and their livestock for fear of infidel thieves, because they were in an inaccessible mountain there. When the Sultan returned to his capital, the shaykh went out to receive him and met him seven miles from it; the Sultan honoured him and embraced him when they met, and he returned to his cave. Then some days later he sent for him, and he refused to come. So he sent to him Mukhliṣ al-Mulk al-Nadhrbārī, one of the great maliks, who spoke gently to him and warned him of the Sultan's fury. He said to him, 'I will never serve a tyrant!' Mukhliṣ al-Mulk returned to the Sultan and told him this, and he ordered that he be brought, and he was brought. He said to him, 'Are you the one who says

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that I am a tyrant?' He said, 'Yes, you are a tyrant, and among your tyrannies are such and such,' and he listed things, among them his laying waste of the city

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Dihlī and his expulsion of its people. The Sultan took his sword and handed it to Ṣadr al-Jahān, saying: "Prove this, that I am a tyrant, and cut off my head with this sword!" Shihāb al-Dīn said to him: "Whoever wishes to testify to that will be killed, but you know your own tyranny!" He ordered him to be handed over to Malik Nakbiya, head of the dawīdārs, who put him in four fetters and chained his hands, and he remained so for fourteen days, fasting continuously, neither eating nor drinking! Each of those days he was brought to the council hall, and the jurists and shaykhs were assembled, and they would say to him: "Retract your words," and he would say: "I will not retract them; I wish to be in the company of the martyrs!" When the fourteenth day came, the Sultan sent him food with Mukhliṣ al-Mulk, but he refused to eat and said: "My sustenance has been lifted from the earth! Take your food back to him!" When the Sultan was told of this, he then ordered that the shaykh be fed five istārs of excrement, which is two and a half raṭls of the raṭls of the Maghrib. Those charged with such matters, who are a group of the Hindu infidels, took it, stretched him on his back, opened his mouth with tongs, dissolved the excrement in water and made him drink it. On the following day he was brought to the house of the qāḍī Ṣadr al-Jahān, and the jurists, shaykhs and leading aʿizza were assembled; they admonished him and asked him to retract his words, but he refused, and his head was struck off, may God Most High have mercy on him.

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